Folks. I am need to board but need some big time help. I put a pretty deep scratch about an inch long down to bare metal on my new truck
Grrrrr. I have the touch up pen and primer from gmc and all the required sandpaper. Prior to ordering the stuff I sanded the area down good (as tried to repair with cheap water soluable touch up with bad results). Since it may be a few days for the stuff to come in I put some clearcoat over the scratch (thinking prevent rust etc). Now I want to remove the clearcoat i put over the spot so I can properly fix. Question, how can I remove that excess clearcoat to get back to bare metal. Again scratch on door is only about an inch but deep. Bonus question, it is pacific blue metallic color. Will repair look “ok”. I know it probably will not look factory new. Tia

Please post some pictures. It's very difficult to give advise without actually seeing what the issues are.

Wish I could post a pic but appear challenged lolReally it is an inch long scratch by door jam thst i candied to bare metal. Not wide at all. That I put some clearcoat on to “protect”. Which I think was not too smart

moonshoxx wrote:Wish I could post a pic but appear challenged lol

scroll down past the reply window and youll see where it says,"upload attachement."
click on it, upload file then click on "add the file."

Unfortunately your biggest mistake was not asking here first.

A single scratch can be repaired with a touch up pen or brush. It won't be invisible, but it can be pretty good. The key is containing the repair to the damage, i.e. in the scratch, filling in multiple coats until slightly overfilled and then polishing back. To do this you need the area adjacent to the scratch to be undamaged, since the polishing back process can reduce the clearcoat thickness a bit.

Sanding it just makes the damage bigger and that means that a touch up repair is no longer a viable solution. More than a couple of millimetres wide and touch up won't be successful.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if you've sanded back to metal then the only way to repair is to respray and if the scratch is near to an edge of the panel then you're probably looking at respraying the adjacent panel as well.

FWIW, you can remove the clearcoat with some acrylic (lacquer) thinners on a cloth.

It is telling me invalid file type. Trying to come straight from iPhone. Scratch really is only about inch. It was down to primer. All the sanding I did was with 800 grit just to feather down edges before touch up. Of course got a little onto surrounding clearcoat

NFT5 wrote:Unfortunately your biggest mistake was not asking here first.

A single scratch can be repaired with a touch up pen or brush. It won't be invisible, but it can be pretty good. The key is containing the repair to the damage, i.e. in the scratch, filling in multiple coats until slightly overfilled and then polishing back. To do this you need the area adjacent to the scratch to be undamaged, since the polishing back process can reduce the clearcoat thickness a bit.

Sanding it just makes the damage bigger and that means that a touch up repair is no longer a viable solution. More than a couple of millimetres wide and touch up won't be successful.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but if you've sanded back to metal then the only way to repair is to respray and if the scratch is near to an edge of the panel then you're probably looking at respraying the adjacent panel as well.

FWIW, you can remove the clearcoat with some acrylic (lacquer) thinners on a cloth.

EXCILENT, exacly what Cris said. SORRY, you're going to need a GOOD body shop. UNLESS you can do it your self.
Jay D.

I really wish I could get a picture or two up. It is only on one panel and about an inch long and maybe 1/16 inch wide max. Also can anyone clear up what bare metal on car looks like (dumb question I know). The scratch is down to a white coat of something.

Hope this works to clarify

Yes picture worked. Any ideas how to get the clearcoat off that I put on to protect spot pending the arrival of touch up paint